I planted two red maples 2 years ago and they have done great. Just today I noticed that one of the trees leaves are all turning like it's fall. This all happened in about 3 days. Here are a few pics
Has your weather been very dry in the past month? Sometimes leaves will turn prematurely if the weather is dry (at this time of the year) or unusually cold at night. Last year we had a dry summer and many sugar maples began to turn about 5 weeks ahead of time. The rain returned and they stopped turning and finished in October. The most susceptible are old stressed trees and young less established ones. It usually doesn't hurt the tree, but the fall color won't be as brilliant. My only other thought is whether you did any landscaping that may have disturbed the roots.
Well, it has not rained here since May but I do water all the trees about every other day. None of the other trees had this happen. I did put in a fence around the pond about 3 weeks ago which 1 of the posts are about 12 foot away but when I dug the hole I didn't hit any roots that I know of. Other than that, I put up a sunscreen on the east side of the fence to protect some plants I just put in. You can see the fence in the background. Just a note, the leaves are not dry and feel like the green ones, nice and flexible. I also looked at the trunk and the limbs and see nothing out of the ordinary and I even see some new growth. Do you think that maybe I need to water it a little more?
Well it's good that your trees look healthy and the leaves are not dry. No rain since MAY!!!! Wow! You could try watering the tree more, I don't think that would hurt it. Some trees are just stronger than others and do better when faced with stresses. I have a small sugar maple that I water when it's dry, but most of the sugar maples here are wild and 150 feet or so. Watering them would be impossible so I have to leave that up to mother nature. We have a swamp maple that turns a beautiful red in the fall, but it's sensitive to dry conditions and many of the smaller branches will turn prematurely and fall, but it doesn't seem to hurt the tree, it comes back every year. It's HUGE and there's no way I could water it (I'd dry out the well). I'd be more concerned if your tree were turning in June or July. When do the leaves usually turn in Oregon?
They usually start turning mid to late September. The only thing that I forgot to mention was the temps around here lately. During the day it has been getting up into the mid to high 90's and at night in the high 50's. Don't know if the drastic change in temps everyday would do it or not. Supposed to get into the high 90's to low 100's this weekend. I'll water some more. Oh, I also just seen that the leaves are starting to fall now this morning.
That's good, then the leaves are only turning about 3-5 weeks ahead. I see a lot of that around here. There is a large sugar maple in the woods behind our property which has about 4 branches turning red and dropping leaves. The rest are still green. Our peak foliage is between the 1st and 15th of October depending on the weather. Around the state, I start to see a few trees turning in late August, some more color in September, then the big "show" in October. The high day temps could be stressing the trees. Isn't that unusual for Oregon? My experience in New England is that the maples start to turn and produce their best color when the days are warm and sunny and the nights are cool. Last year we had a dry summer followed by a warm wet autumn and the leaves that didn't turn early (due to the dryness) turned late and weren't as brilliant as usual. So, yes, I would say your warm days and cool nights could be contributing to the change, plus it's a young tree and they are likely to turn earlier. When I lived in the southern US, there were small (landscaping) maples that would turn color early in the season, but actually had better color than the mature trees.
Well, I won't worry too much about it then and keep watering as usual. The temps are a little higher than average for a few weeks but not by a lot. There's no dead branches and also new growth like I said before so maybe it's ok. Thanks for your input.
